


Human Things

by ChloeWeird, SylvieW



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence, Domestic, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-13 02:11:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11174832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChloeWeird/pseuds/ChloeWeird, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvieW/pseuds/SylvieW
Summary: Stiles keeps running into Derek, and can't leave well enough alone.





	Human Things

**Author's Note:**

> We're very happy to again be sharing something we created together. Hope you enjoy!

*******

Stiles dropped his bag of clothes to the floor of the laundromat, sparing no thought to its questionable cleanliness. They were about to get washed anyway, so what did he care if they got a little lint on them? Better that than trying to get them to the nearest available washer and having his arms give out on the way, dropping his--and his dad's--clothes and having them fly everywhere. 

He leaned back and cracked his spine, groaning at the age-disproportionate ache. He should've driven here. _Oh, the laundromat's only a few blocks away,_ he'd thought. _Why waste the gas when I could just walk?_

Laundry was heavy, that was why. In its giant, awkward lump of a sack, he hadn't been able to carry it in any way that made ergonomic sense, so after less than 10 minutes of trudging closer, he felt like he'd been lifting weights for an hour. 

"Time to hit the gym," he muttered to no one in particular, as he grabbed the top of the bag and pushed it with his foot toward the line of washers--no, those were dryers. He groaned and switched directions. 

If his life was going to continue to be as physical as a horror movie that managed to cast a B-list action star as the lead, his current regime wasn't going to cut it. He could sprint like a star, thanks to Coach's touching concern for their cardiovascular health, but he still lacked something in upper body strength, as evidenced by the burn in his biceps. 

There was only one machine left in the row, so he made a beeline for it. He'd been expecting it to be busy, so he counted himself lucky that he didn't have to wait. This place had the best reviews on Yelp, and the only negative ones had been about the crowds of people who appreciated the free wi-fi a little too much and wouldn't leave after their spin cycle was done. 

Despite how uncommonly clean all the reviews had said it was, Stiles still felt a little gross just being there. He knew it was completely irrational, but the idea of washing the clothes that went on his body in the same machine that had washed clothes from strangers' bodies made his skin itch. For the 10th time in as many minutes, he wished he could've made it through until the repair guy came in a couple of days, but it just wasn't feasible. He'd been putting off doing laundry for days before his washing machine broke, so unless he wanted to go commando in track pants on Monday morning at school, he needed to wash some boxers and jeans.

He jammed the buttons on the washer a little harder than necessary, then swore when he got laundry soap all over his fingers from the leaky bottle he'd brought from home. It wasn't difficult to figure out, though, so the drum was filled and agitating in no time. He slouched over to the rickety table and folding chairs that'd been set up in the corner and pulled out his phone, intending to while away the time by texting Scott random SAT words to define. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the door open and someone come through, and he almost dismissed them. Something made him look closer, however--maybe it was the familiar wary tense of his shoulders or some mystical alpha presence--and he realized that he was looking at Derek. 

Derek Hale was opening one of the dryers and pulling out his clothes, folding them perfunctorily on a nearby washer. Stiles didn't know why he counted, but he did. Three shirts, one tank top that looked like it'd seen better days, and a single pair of jeans. He watched as Derek slung the dry, clean jeans over an arm and disappeared into the tiny washroom at the end of the laundromat, closing the door with a quiet click.

Stiles was frozen in his chair. When Derek came out, there was no way he wouldn't see Stiles sitting there. Should he say hello? Were they at that point? If you hadn't had a civil conversation with a person, but had saved their life a couple times, and been fully prepared--if not thrilled--to cut off their arm for them, did you exchange pleasantries? 

He didn't get the chance to weigh the pros and cons of making small talk with an alpha werewolf who probably hated his guts, because Derek came out of the bathroom after about only half a minute. He was...wearing different jeans. Stiles frowned. Derek had switched pants. He could tell, because the ones he'd put on were darker than the ones that Stiles had attempted not to notice hugged his ass in a really flattering way. 

And then, suddenly, they were making eye contact, after Stiles had just been thinking about how well Derek filled out his jeans. Derek froze with his hand still on the door of the little bathroom, his gaze locked on Stiles'. The beat of awkward silence stretched as they both acknowledged that they were seeing each other do a normal human--or _person_ \--thing like washing their clothes. 

The moment passed and Derek turned away, his shoulders stiffer than before. _Huh_ , Stiles thought. It was obvious that Derek hadn't noticed him until that moment, which meant that he hadn't smelled him. That was surprising, given that the shirt Stiles was wearing was on day three, for lack of anything cleaner, but he supposed that places like these were full of all sorts of smells. 

Abruptly, he wished fervently that he could quiz Derek on what the range on his super-sniffer was like, if it could be interfered with easily, if his ability was better than Scott's, if he'd had to practice to get it that way, or was it just because he was an alpha? A hundred trails down a hundred rabbit holes to find out everything there was to know about werewolves.

He already knew all there was to know about Best Friend Scott, but somewhat unsurprisingly, Werewolf Scott wasn't as much of an open book. There was only so many times he could pester Scott to go out to a field with him to test that kind of stuff before he got the hint that Scott was still dealing with a kind of homosapien dysphoria. 

Nothing was stopping him from walking over and asking Derek any of the questions he had....except the massive chasm of their shared traumatic experiences. How the hell did someone walk up to another person that they accidentally knew so much about and ask them whether gunshot wounds hurt the same regardless of whether they heal almost instantly? How did Stiles begin to have a conversation with a person he'd looked in the face when they had accepted their answer to the horrifying choice between dying and living without an arm? 

He didn't. Instead, he planned to sit in the rickety chair until his laundry was finished, switch it to the dryer, wait around some more, then go home and pray that somehow, he could live the rest of his life as a statistically average teenager. If the first few months of The Your Best Friend's a Werewolf Now Show was any indication, he didn't think he'd be getting any peace any time soon. 

Stiles pretended that he had been thoroughly sucked back into messing around on his phone, but really, he was watching Derek. Derek, who put laundry soap in the washer in the wrong order, because he was a total heathen. Derek, who might not have been the type of kid who did his own laundry, even in high school, because his parents always did it for him. Derek, who was on his own now, with no one to tell him how to use laundry soap properly. 

Stiles looked up at the ceiling, suddenly angry at fate and xenophobic bitches who deserved to have their throats shredded by crazy alphas with rage issues that, to a certain degree, were pretty justified. 

When he looked back--subtly, or as subtle as he could get--he saw Derek place his single pair of jeans in the washer and close the lid. The Californian in him cringed at the waste of water, and the kid inside him who'd learned the best way to do laundry by trial and error at 11 year old and considered it an art screamed and cried. 

Then, the human in him, who was capable of empathy and deductive reasoning, shrunk in pity. Derek was washing one of two pairs of jeans alone because he didn't have anything else to wear if he decided to wash them both. Stiles couldn't come up with a single other reason why Derek would spend the time and money--the only other negative review of the place had concerned the steep prices--to wash a single item of clothing. 

Three shirts. A beat-up tank top. Two pairs of jeans. Why would Derek have felt the need to bring anything more with him when he'd followed his sister from wherever they'd come from?

Well, actually, something was missing, Stiles realized. Unless Derek was the type to freeball it, he probably had some underwear at home. 

Stiles fought a grin. He didn't know Derek's life, obviously. But if he were to wager a guess, he'd say that Derek Hale, big bad alpha with the muscles and the tragic backstory and the face a modelling agency that specialized in fear boners would love, was too embarrassed to bring his underwear to a public place to clean them. Stiles had to clamp his mouth down on a giggle as he pictured Derek washing his skivvies in the sink and hanging them to dry. 

His laughter dried up when he realized he was picturing it wrong. Derek probably did that in a stream in the preserve, or furtively, in a public bathroom, or just decided to screw it and buy a new back of tight-fitting (probably) black (almost assuredly) boxer briefs (Stiles hoped, but that was quite the mental image).

Someone who lived in burned out husks of houses and abandoned railway stations didn't have a lot of room for a ton of clothes to choose from. Especially when the safety of that temporary home could be compromised at any moment. 

Someone approached the table and glared disapprovingly at him until he remembered that he'd propped his feet up on the other empty chair at the table. He mumbled a quick, "sorry" and moved his legs out of the way so quickly that he whacked his knee against the metal table with a clank loud enough to echo. 

He was clutching his throbbing kneecap and swearing under his breath when he caught Derek's eyes again. Derek's gaze flicked down to Stiles' hands, then he smirked--freaking smirked--at Stiles' obvious pain brought on by his tendency to forget that his limbs were longer than they were two years ago. 

Stiles glared back at him until Derek went back to leaning against his washer and staring at the ugly tiled ceiling. _Man,_ Stiles thought. Leave it to Derek to make Stiles go from pity for his deprived existence to annoyance at his smug assholish ways. 

Stiles couldn't really blame him though. He, himself, had laughed at Scott every school day for an entire semester in freshman year when Scott would get up from his desk and nail himself in the hip with the corner. Every single time, without fail, until he finally got used to how tall he was--still not that tall--post-growth spurt. 

Stiles went back to sending Scott entire pages of his favourite emojis, then realized it was too quiet. He craned his neck to pick his washer out of the line of identical ones, and saw that the light blinking. He didn't know what that meant, but if he were to make a guess, he'd probably say it was that his stuff was done. 

He got up--His knee twinged. Ow.--then transferred his wet clothes into a dryer across the row, intensely aware of the fact Derek was less than 10 feet away and could look over and see his underwear at any moment. 

Stiles was a young adult human being. He had the right to wash his underwear in a public place and not feel uncomfortable about it. Derek could go fuck himself if he was going to judge him for the mustache print on his favourite pair of boxers. 

Coasting on his righteous indignation about Derek's imaginary judgement, Stiles dug his change out of his pocket and shoved it in the slot...only for it to roll out into the returned coins cup. He tried again. The same thing happened. He picked another quarter, wondering if the machines were too old to accept any coins minted after the year 2000 or something. The same thing happened with the new quarter. 

"Well, what the hell," Stiles muttered, squinting at the instructions to see what he was doing wrong. He was a millennial. He should have been able to figure it out. He tried his quarter again, frustrated and fed up, seconds away from handing out some percussion therapy if it didn't take his damn money--

"That one's weird."

Stiles jumped and banged his other knee into the side of the dryer. He groaned and slumped over, leaning on his elbows as he fought not to scream. He wasn't sure if he was happy that he'd managed to avoid a collision with his already-injured leg. On one hand, it probably would have hurt a whole lot more to bang a bruise against metal. On the other hand, now he'd have matching bruises that would be difficult to explain in gym class on Monday. 

After a cleansing breath, Stiles straightened up and addressed Derek, who was obviously fighting another malicious grin, the fucker. "What do you mean?"

Derek pointed at the coin slot. "You have to put in two really quickly. That's the only way it'll take them."

Stiles frowned, then coordinated his quarters so that he could drop them in in quick succession. The red and green lights on the button panel started to flash, and a timer started counting down. 

"Thanks," Stiles muttered. 

"No problem," Derek said, then he wandered back to where he was waiting for his own clothes--one item of clothing--to be finished. 

Avoiding each other was harder after that. Before, they'd had a mutual unspoken agreement to communicate only as much as strangers would, but because Derek had broken that agreement, however helpfully, Stiles felt like he couldn't just continue on as he had been. He felt like he had to acknowledge that they were less than friends but definitely more than strangers. 

But what the hell was he supposed to talk about? 'Glad you're not dead, yet, Derek. It was touch and go for a while there.' 'I see your existence is pretty pitiful, Derek. Are you trying to change that, or what?"

"So, what's new with you?" Stiles tried, leaning his back against the dryer then immediately pushing away again because it wasn't very comfortable. 

Derek lifted an eyebrow. (Stiles got distracted for a second, observing how he could see its entire upward trajectory, because it was so thick and dark. Stiles had never been attracted to eyebrows before, but at that moment, he couldn't even recall what Lydia's looked like.)

"Why do you care?" Derek asked, flatly. His whole body was still as a prey animal, but his fists were clenched on top of the washer he was guarding. 

Stiles shrugged. "Why shouldn't I?" 

Stiles heard a mild creak as Derek's fists pressed down into the metal, then released to shove themselves deep into pockets. 

"Because you've never cared, and your pack hates mine?" Derek said. 

Stiles scratched his nose and looked up at the ceiling again. "Well, I can't really speak for my pack, which at this point contains Scott and....no one else, but I don't hate you. Or your pack." (What's left of it.) 

There was a long pause, during which Stiles didn't look at Derek and Derek didn't seem to move much at all, from what Stiles could hear. The machines rumbled on. Another person entered the laundromat, loaded their clothes, and left again. 

"I'm fine," Derek said quietly. 

"Good." Stiles looked over at Derek, who looked like a statue of Atlas who hadn't yet figured out that someone had taken the world off his shoulders. "This is the part where you ask me how I'm doing." 

Derek shot him an unimpressed look. "How are you doing?" 

Stiles grinned. That was the Derek he knew; Angry-hot and unreasonably annoyed at standard social conventions. 

"Dandy," he answered. "Except my washing machine is broken, even though it's only two years old. Annoying, right?" 

"I guess." 

"Nah, no guessing. Definitely annoying." 

Derek shifted his weight on his feet and squinted at Stiles. "Sure." 

There was another long stretch of nothing but rumbling and sloshing. Stiles started to wonder what it was like for a werewolf to be in a place like this, with so much background noise. Was it easy to tune it out, or did Derek feel like he was listening to a white noise machine that he couldn't shut off? Stiles remembered how weird Scott had been those first few weeks, but considering that he'd changed entire species, Stiles thought he'd gotten used to it pretty quickly.

"How's school?" Derek asked and Stiles nearly tripped from a stationary standing position because _Derek had initiated small talk._

"Fine," Stiles replied. "It's school, you know? I'm good at it, but I don't enjoy it."

"It isn't hard for you?"

Stiles froze, then narrowed his eyes at Derek. "Not anymore. Why?"

Derek shrugged. "Your ADHD."

Stiles relaxed and started to beat an absentminded pattern on the top of the dryer. "Oh. No, not now that I'm medicated and I have a better understanding as to how my brain works. It was a mess before, though, you're right. And my aunt is one of those hippie herbalist anti-vaxxers, and she convinced my dad for a long time that he was going to poison me by giving me drugs that make my brain work a little more like everyone else's. But he got over that when he found out he didn't have to call Scott's name 15 before Scott responded."

Derek nodded. Stiles didn't have much of a frame of reference, but he would wager that the small quirk of Derek's lips that was there then gone in a second was something close to a smile. 

"Wait," Stiles said, his brain freezing up again. "Did I tell you about my ADHD?" He couldn't think of a time when he would have gotten the chance.

Derek's head jerked back on his shoulders and he frowned, but not in a scowly way. "Oh. I guess not."

"Then how do you know about it?" Stiles prompted.

Derek's hand came up to scratch at the back of his neck. When he met Stiles' eyes, his face was scrunched with embarrassment. "You smell like amphetamines, and I'm pretty sure you're not on speed all the time."

Stiles relaxed again and chuckled a little, imagining himself on any sort of upper that wasn't prescribed to him. He had no clue what his body chemistry would do with it, but it probably wouldn't be good. "Truth. Do you deduce personal things about virtual strangers a lot?"

"Sorry. It's kind of--" Derek paused and his eyes flicked toward the door, which could open at any time. "A cultural thing. There's no secrets because we can smell everything. All my relatives were really blunt. It got them into trouble sometimes because what other people think is rude, they just think is plain as day. Why not tell someone they look tired when they smell worn out and irritable?"

"Huh. Interesting. I never thought about it that way." There was a lot of things he hadn't thought about Derek, if he was honest. "So, why do you know what Adderall smells like? Does that stuff even work on _you guys_?" He leaned on the words for emphasis and Derek shot him an unimpressed look, but sobered quickly. 

"My cousin," he said quietly. "He was human, and he had trouble in school. They weren't really sure if he had a disorder or if he hated school. He was on Adderall for a little while before…"

Before. Stiles' gut twisted at the thought of how different Derek's life would have been _before._ He sure as hell wouldn't have been washing his jeans one at a time because he only had two pairs. 

"Oh," Stiles said. "I'm sorry." 

Derek shrugged stiffly with one shoulder, then went back to staring at the control panel of the washing machine.

Stiles fidgeted with his shoes. Was that the end of their unexpected, but surprisingly normal conversation? It seemed an odd place to leave it: The tragic and untimely murder of most of Derek's family at the hands of a psychopath.

The buzzer on his dryer went off and Stiles jumped six inches in the air. Derek didn't even bother to hide his snort of laughter. 

"Yeah, yeah," Stiles said, gratefully fetching his laundry bag and shoving everything in. Even his underwear. "I'll see you around?" 

Derek turned his head slowly, like he'd been expecting Stiles to be talking to someone else. "Sure," he said, then he nodded and turned away. A clear dismissal. 

Stiles wondered if he had a checklist he was ticking off. _Social interaction: Check. Laundering of clothing: Check. Growl at fluffy bunnies in the woods: Scheduled for 5 PM._

Stiles laughed quietly to himself as he walked out the door, until he realized that walking with a huge bag of laundry was not as bad as walking home with a huge bag of laundry and two bruised knees. 

"Ugh," he said, and he started the trek back to his house.

***

One of Stiles’ favourite things about modern technology was that Saturday morning cartoons were no longer limited to Saturday mornings. He could binge watch Bugs Bunny any time he wanted, which meant he wasn’t tied to the TV. Instead, he could do what he wanted with his Saturday. Most people his age would take the opportunity to sleep in, but Stiles had enough issues with insomnia, he didn’t need to destroy his sleep schedule every few days. 

Instead, more often than not, his Saturday mornings were spent at the farmer’s market. He was there frequently enough to know the regular vendors by name. It took him longer than necessary to do his shopping every week because he’d linger to talk to Gladys about her poodle, or ask about Bart’s grandkids. He knew that the Rhodes’ family had the best eggs, and Martha Sue’s jams tasted the most like his mom's. He no longer jumped a foot in the air when the old bat from Sanderson shouted, “Fresh Honey!” anytime someone got within a twenty foot radius of her table. 

His dad had a rare morning off, so he had joined him for his trip, but had slipped off into the crowd, probably to find the butcher. The farmer’s market was Stiles’ playground, and he was happy enough to navigate it alone. Also, he had an arrangement with the butcher’s grandson. The second his father showed up they’d be miraculously out of bacon, but have an excellent sale on something nice and lean.

He had two vendors that he alternated between most frequently for his vegetables. He nearly bypassed Hartfield’s in favour of McKay’s but an unexpected sight stopped him in his tracks. “Derek?”

Derek set the pail of asparagus he was hefting on his hip down at the end of the truck with a thump. He gave Stiles one of his default glares before quickly schooling his features into a blank expression. 

“Hey,” Derek said. It was disconcerting how dead inside the lack of glare made him look. 

“You have a job now?” Stiles winced at how incredulous he sounded. But really, did guys who lived in abandoned trains, only had two pairs of pants, and threatened people with claws get jobs?

Derek hopped out of the truck bed to sling the asparagus over to the table. “No, it’s not-- I’m just--” He shot a side eyed look toward Jake Hartfield, who was watching them out of the corner of his eye. “It’s just a trial run. They’re short handed today.”

“Neat,” Stiles said. He gossiped with enough other market vendors to know Hartfield demanded a lot from his workers, but overall he was a fair guy. He never expected them to do more than he could himself and he treated his customers politely. It couldn’t hurt for Derek to have a boss that treated him decently. Stiles hoped that if he got a job, he could get more pants. If the suspicious looks they were getting were anything to go by then that wasn't going to happen. 

Sitles juggled his purchases into one arm and stepped up to the table. “Help me pick something.” 

“What?” Derek was glaring again. 

“I need to buy shit. Help me.” Stiles gestured at the large table laden with vegetables. “What should I get?”

Derek huffed minutely, crossing his arms. “I’m just supposed to being moving the heavy stuff, not helping customers.”

“Well, too bad,” Stiles said. “How about that asparagus? Sniff out a bunch for me.”

“Was that a dog joke?” Derek asked, arching one of those damn eyebrows that made Stiles' brain go _yum._

“No, that was a request to put a valid skill I’m sure you possess to use so that I can feed my dad asparagus tonight. Pick one.” Stiles set the bag he had slung over his shoulder onto the edge of the table. He’d already made at least four stops, and the strap was digging into his shoulder.

Derek stared at him for a moment, arms crossed and mouth set. Then he looked around the market and the fight left him. He leaned over the pail and gave a subtle sniff. He picked out two bunches and handed them over one at a time. “This one can be eaten today. Eat the other one on Wednesday.”

“Oh, twice in one week, Dad will be thrilled.” Stiles grinned and jerked his head at the rest of the table. “What else?”

Derek loaded him up with salad greens and tomatoes, along with basil for sandwiches.

“Tomato and basil sandwiches?” Stiles said, adding them to the produce in his arms.

 

“It’s good,” Derek said, shrugging. “I can’t ring you up..”

“That’s fine,” Stiles said, lugging his purchases over to the register. No chance Jake was going to let the ex-fugitive near the cash box. “Thanks for helping.”

“Derek, can you grab another bin of rocket?” Jake asked, tallying up Stiles’ total.

Derek nodded silently, and hopped back into the truck bed. There was dirt on the back of his thigh, Stiles noticed. Derek have to wash his jeans again. Stiles shook himself to stop thinking about the way the jeans hugged Derek's legs and focus the things he was buying. “I don’t think I’ve bought basil before,” Stiles told Jake. “I just get the dry stuff.”

He caught the face Derek made, but didn’t comment.

Jake nodded. “Always good to try something new. It’s a much stronger flavour this way.” 

“Derek said it’s good with tomatoes,” Stiles pointed out. “He picked it out for me.”

“Hmph,” was Jake’s only reply, but he was looking at Derek with a little less wariness.

Jake was handing over the bag of Stiles’ purchases when the Sheriff caught up with him. Sure enough, his hands were laden with brown paper packages. He took one look at Stiles’ disapproving face and said, “Never you mind.”

Stiles launched into his usual lecture. “Your heart--”

“Derek, how are you?” The Sheriff asked, cutting Stiles off.

“Rude,” Stiles muttered.

Derek’s eyes widened a little as he looked back and forth between the Stilinskis. “Fine,” he said, voice laced with unease. Stiles had to concede he had a right to be suspicious, considering that the last time he’d seen the Sheriff was from the wrong side on an interrogation table.

“Didn’t expect to see you here, but I suppose it makes sense,” the Sheriff said. “You were always helping out your Aunt Mary. She had the best strawberries in the whole market.”

Stiles had seen Derek smile before. Seen the nasty glint of teeth before Derek said something cutting, seen the debonair grin he used to charm his way into somewhere. He had never seen _this_ smile though. It was soft, and small, and a little bit sad, but brighter all the same for the honesty in it. “Yeah, she did,” Derek agreed. 

Stiles thought that one smile did more for his libido than hours of seeing Derek shirtless. And his abs were nothing to sneeze at.

The Sheriff squeezed Stiles shoulder and gave him a gentle shake, pushing him in the direction of the parking lot. “Well, Stiles will likely see you next week. Take care.” 

Jake waved them off, but before they were out of earshot, he heard him say to Derek, “Mrs. Barett always gets too much and drops her eggs. You can help her carry them out to her car. When you get back, I’ll show you how to weigh the tomatoes.”

Stiles smiled to himself. Trial run his ass. Derek now worked for Jake McKay.

*** 

Main Street was a stupid way to drive home from Scott’s house. It didn’t matter how many times Stiles told himself that, when he got in his car to go home, muscle memory kicked in and he found himself taking the street that used to be the heart of town before the mall opened and killed half the local downtown businesses.

Some days he breezed down the street. Rarely. Most days, he got stuck at the red light. The Sheriff maintained that it was a normal street light that waited a normal amount of time before changing. Stiles disagreed. He wasn’t sure if it was the programming, or just the odd flow of traffic that used to use it, but it was the longest red light in town. There was never more than a couple of cars going that direction, and yet, he sat, and sat, and sat. 

Many a person seemed to agree with him, because Stiles knew that his intersection garnered the most tickets for running a red in all of Beacon County.

Since the light wasn’t changing anytime soon, Stiles let his eyes wander, watching a dog walk down the street and a child chase after a ball before his gaze landed on familiar hunched shoulders.

“Shit,” Stiles said. He didn’t understand how he could go weeks without seeing Derek, and now see him three times in under two weeks. He was standing on the sidewalk outside a store with his signature jacket on. 

Something was off^,though. His stance was wrong, less sure than it usually was. He kept crossing his arms, then dropping them again to clench his fists at his side. He almost turned away, but jerked to a stop before he could go. He reached for the door, then pulled his hand back to shove it through his hair instead.

The store Derek was pacing in front of was called Xavier’s Designs. It was easily the best florist shop in Beacon Hills, and Stiles was very familiar with their products. He’d purchased them often enough since his mother died. 

It had been hard at first, going in and trying to pick something she’d like when he knew he wouldn’t get to hide him behind his back and watch his mother’s eyes light up when he handed them to her like she used to. He wouldn’t get to watch as she inhaled deeply and smiled softly and said 'Aren’t they just lovely?' before taking out her own mother’s crystal vase and putting them in a place of honour high up on the counter where Stiles couldn’t easily knock them down. Instead, any flowers he chose now would go to her grave, sit in the cold metal urn and wither.

It had been hard, but Stiles and his dad had gone together at first. Stiles had held his dad’s hand tightly, and they’d braved the florist's again and again, until it didn’t hurt so keenly. It still stung, but not as sharply.

Derek didn’t have someone to hold his hand. All the people who might have lessened the sting needed flowers on their _own_ graves.

Stiles stomach churned with guilt as it occurred to him that Derek had left planted flowers on a grave once. And Stiles had dug it up and called the cops.

What Derek did wasn’t any of his business. Derek was a grown ass man, and if he wanted to go buy flowers, he didn’t need Stiles butting his nose in to do it. If he wanted to, he could ask Isaac to go with him, though lately Isaac seemed to be spending more time with Scott than with Derek. Derek could even ask Peter. He wouldn’t, but he could. Stiles Stilinski had to be the last person on his list of who he’d get to help him with something so deeply personal. 

Stiles took one last look at the tense line of Derek’s shoulders and said, “Fuck it.” He smacked his signal on and turned down a side street, pulling into the first parking spot available. 

He stomped past Derek, grabbing his wrist on the way by. “Come on^ then.”

“What are you going here?” Derek ground out, but he didn’t tug his arm away from Stiles.

“Helping you get flowers,” Stiles said. The bell above the door jingled cheerfully as they entered, at odds with the sadness of their purpose.

“Hello, what can I help you with?” Angelo was one of Stiles favourite florists. He was always smiling. And it didn’t look like a fake, customer service, _I don’t actually want to be here_ smile either. It was like he was legitimately always that happy.

“Flowers, my friend,” Stiles said grandly, then whispered conspiratorially to Derek, “I don’t know shit about flowers. The trick is to give Angelo the basics and let him do the rest. It’s way easier, and cheaper, and the results look way nicer.”

“Okay.” Derek was staring at all the flowers a bit wide eyed, and his nostrils were flaring. Stiles wondered if a place like this was difficult for werewolves. Even Stiles’ human nose was drowning in the perfume of different blooms. It could be hell on an advanced sense of smell, or maybe a nice break from the concrete jungle outside.

“Angelo, I need something small and blue today,” Stiles said. He went back and forth with the florist a bit, picking out a few different options for the price he was willing to pay and negotiating filler flowers. Stiles liked to think he was pretty easy going, but he also liked the way Angelo included him in the process.

“Okay, your turn,” Stiles said, when his arrangement was tied in cellophane and light blue ribbon. He clapped Derek on the back and pushed him forward a bit.

“Um--” Derek faltered a bit, then started tugging at the curls of the ribbon on the counter. “I think I need two arrangements, a bigger one and a smaller one?”

“Sure,” Angelo said turning his easy smile on Derek. “You want them to match?”

Derek opened his mouth and closed it again a couple times, then blew a frustrated breath out through his nose.

“Who’s the small one for?” Stiles asked. He was trying to stay casual, but it was a challenge when he could see how uncomfortable Derek was by the tightness of his jaw.

“Laura,” Derek ground out.

Stiles nodded. That was what he’d thought. “Do you know if there were any flowers she was particularly fond of? Favourite colour maybe, or the season she liked best?”

“She liked lilacs because of the smell, she wore green most often because it brought out her eyes, but she’d say her favourite colour chartreuse, just to mess with people. She liked spring, because she thought it held promise, but fall was more fun.” Derek was a little out of breath from the effort of the info dump. It wasn’t a lot of words by Stiles’ standards, but for Derek it was practically a soliloquy. 

“Great,” Stiles said cheerfully. It felt strange to hear about Laura, but at the same time he wanted to hear more, like what was so fun about fall and what colour even _was_ chartreuse anyway. Instead of pressing Derek further, he turned to Angelo. “Does that give you somewhere to start?”

“Certainly,” Angelo agreed. “What kind of budget do you have?”

“Whatever,” Derek said. “Just-- Yeah, whatever is good.”

“Dude, these things can be like a hundred bucks a pop,” Stiles pointed out. “Angelo here does good honest work, but I’m sure he’s got some pricey flowers that he should know if he’s avoiding.”

Derek shrugged. “Mom always said it’s important to put money into local businesses. I don’t mind if it’s expensive.”

Stiles was pleased to see Angelo didn’t immediately go for the most expensive flowers, he chose a couple for accenting, but also added a liberal amount of inexpensive filler flowers to flush it out without overpowering it. Laura’s bouquet looked lovely, but the other one was a bit harder.

“I know Mom liked tulips, but I don’t know about the others. It never really came up,” Derek said. Stiles knew that a number of the Hales who died had been children, not old enough to grow a preference. Not old enough for a lot of things that they'd never grow to have. They decided that tulips would be fine for this time of year and put together an area of different colours. It was both cheerful and elegant, and Derek looked pleased. 

They settled up with Angelo, Stiles only wincing slightly at the amount Derek paid, before taking their purchases back out to the street.

“Great. So, that’s how you get flowers,” Stiles said, walking back toward his jeep. “You should either get those in water soon or bring them to… wherever it is you’re putting them.”

“You mean the cemetery,” Derek said, eyebrow mocking him.

Stiles gave him a flat look. “I wasn’t sure if your family was buried there or not. You seem like the “Private plot with all the Hale ancestors for generations in one place” types.”

Derek shrugged. “We are. There’s a section of the Beacon Hill’s cemetery that’s all Hales. But the city paid to have a memorial put in for everyone who died in the fire rather than individual plots.”

The morbidly curious part of Stiles wanted to ask about that, ask if it was how he’d wanted it or if there just hadn’t been enough left to bury separately, but he quickly decided he didn’t want to know. “Okay. Well, I should take these to my mom,” Stiles said, gesturing to the blue bouquet in hand. He didn’t see Derek’s car around. “Want to ride together?”

Derek silently slipped into the passenger seat of the jeep.

***

"I never really got why people talked to dead people in graveyards." 

Derek didn't say anything. He just continued to stare at the monument in front of them, every line in his body taut with misery. Stiles thought he'd been getting better at not filling up silence with unnecessary sound, but right then, he thought he'd go crazy if he had to listen to nothing but the wind through the trees and through the rows of headstones. 

"I mean, if you're religious and you believe in some kind of afterlife, wouldn't the dead person hear you even if you weren't standing on top of them?" He shifted his feet, uncomfortable with the image even though he wasn't currently standing on anyone. "But then, if it's more of a symbolic thing, why do people in movies always give the headstone a play by play of their life? Why would the grass and the granite give a shit about someone's new job? Maybe it comes down to my inability to fathom anyone believing in a magical place in the sky run by an apathetic parental figure, but it never seemed like a reasonable thing for anyone to do."

"Maybe it's about the connection," Derek said. 

Stiles was shocked into taking a step to the side. He hadn't forgotten Derek was there, but after 20 minutes of deadly quiet--he winced inwardly at the unintentional pun--he'd gotten used to Derek being as still as one of the angel statues watching over the saddest graves with the shortest date spans.

"You think?"

Derek shrugged, his leather jacket squeaking. "Maybe. Something about being physically close to a permanent memory of them. Could make it easier to think about them, which might make it easier to talk to them. Or about them." 

Stiles frowned at the cold, reflective surface of the monument in of them, and all the names of the people he'd never meet because they were seven years gone. "Is that how you feel?" 

"No." 

It was so startlingly blunt that Stiles huffed a short laugh, then wanted to slap himself for being such an asshole. What kind of person laughed in a cemetery, when standing in front of a memorial for nearly an entire family? That was too dark, even for him. 

"So, you don't talk to them?" Stiles pressed. 

"Don't need to. They're dead." 

Stiles' heart picked up and his face felt prickly and numb at the same time. His anxiety was spiking harder the longer they had this conversation. He was nowhere near a panic attack, though. He just wished he hadn't brought it up in the first place. 

He shoved his hands in his pockets."You don't believe in an afterlife?" 

"No," Derek said immediately, then he grimaced--the first expression he'd shown in nearly half an hour. "Well, not the one they teach in church on Sundays. Peter told me once about where he was when he was..."

"Dead," Stiles finished. 

"Yeah. He said it wasn't really anywhere. He said it felt like almost no time had passed at all, and that he wasn't aware of it, other than the times he was in Lydia's head telling her what to do to bring him back to life."

Stiles let his eyes wander over the engraved names in the stones, tracing their curves and lines. "So, no warm, white light? No hellfire and brimstone?" 

"No. Just nothingness." Derek looked down at the ground, breaking the straight line of his back with an uncertain bend. "Can't believe anything he says, though. He could have gone somewhere magical, for all I know. But I don't think he'd lie if there was an afterlife, and he'd seen our family there. I don't think he would've come back if there was." 

The wind picked up again, whipping the collar of Stiles' shirt into his face. 

"I used to be jealous of religious people," Stiles said. "They all seemed so comforted by the idea that they'd see everyone they ever loved in heaven when they died. Death wasn't such a bad thing, because even though they'd miss the dead person when they were gone, it was only temporary. They had eternity waiting for them. How fucking great must that be, I always thought." 

In the corner of his eye, Stiles saw Derek turn his head to look at him. He couldn't see what Derek looked like, but he suspected that even if he could see, he wouldn't be able to read the expression. He might take a guess, that it'd show pity, or sadness, or even annoyance, but he wouldn't know. He hated that he didn't know. 

"But even after this whole werewolf thing," he continued, unable to stop his running mouth. "And magic, and metaphysical mumbo jumbo. I soul searched and considered, and weighed everything I knew, and I still can't find it in me to rely on the promise of someone waiting for me on the other side, if only I tried to be a good, pious person, and give to the poor, and don't covet my neighbour's wife, and don't wear mixed-fiber fabrics."

This time, the sound of laughter didn't come from him. Stiles whipped his head to look at Derek and caught the tail end of a smothered smile. He'd definitely heard a snort. Stiles felt his own lips twitching. 

"What are you snickering at?" Stiles asked. 

"Nothing," Derek answered quickly, his face shuttering to Neutral Evil again.

"Bullshit." 

"I was just thinking," Derek said. Stiles perked up in surprise. He hadn't thought Derek would bother answering him. "It's weird to hear you getting maudlin, but this is the place for it, isn't?"

Stiles nodded. "No place better to be sappy and existential than the place where humans memorialize their dead."

"Even though the dead aren't even around to enjoy it."

"Or care," Stiles added. 

"They could be buried in a grocery story parking lot, for all they know." 

A bark of laughter splatted out of Stiles' mouth, and he covered it quickly. "Oh my god. Stop. Someone's gonna come over here and tell us we're terrible people." 

"We are a little bit, though," Derek said, barely loud enough to carry. 

That stole away the brief, inappropriate levity. Stiles shifted his body weight from foot to foot as he sifted through his memories of being genuinely willing to kill Jackson. Of agreeing with Peter, deep down, that the people who killed his family deserved to die themselves. Of thinking, for a split second, about accepting Peter's offer of the bite so that he could be better--not just than his current self, but better than Scott, who'd always been the only one slower, more fragile, and more alone than Stiles. 

Derek was probably going through the same motions, gathering up the stains on his soul to see under the light. 

"Yeah," Stiles croaked. He cleared his throat. "Doesn't mean I want to inflict my dark, pragmatic humour one anyone who isn't down for it." 

Derek lifted one of his damned sexy eyebrows. "Humour?" 

Stiles poked him hard in the arm. "Oh, screw you. I'm the funny friend, everyone says so."

"Everyone, huh?"

"Scott says so. He's the only one who matters."

Derek toed a tuft of grass with his foot. "Not Isaac?"

Stiles grimaced at the reminder of the new third wheel in his friendship with Scott. "No. Isaac only thinks he's the funny friend." 

"As if." 

Derek's incredulous tone made Stiles grin, watered his crops and fixed his sleep schedule. "That's what I said," he exclaimed.

"He doesn't know where the line is between clever and cruel."

Stiles tried a sardonic eyebrow lift of his own. "And I do?"

"Usually. From what I've seen." Derek looked up into the trees overhead, exposing the long line of his throat. "Or if you misjudge, it's because someone needs a bit of cruelty to get them to see your side. The right side." 

Stiles' mouth hung open in the dry outdoor air for a good few seconds before he remembered to snap it closed and think of something to say in reply. "I think I might actually cry." 

"Please don't."

"I was just going to say that he lacks the natural charisma to be the funny friend, but I'm not gonna disagree with you telling me I'm right all the time."

Derek rolled his eyes with his entire head, a strangely lupine movement. "Not all the time."

"Nope, you said it, I'm not letting it go ever. If I had a headstone like these ones, it would read 'here lies Stiles Stilinski. The funny one. Derek Hale once told him he was always right.'"

Derek gave Stiles a gentle shove with an open palm, just hard enough to put him off balance. "Good thing you won't, then," he said. He met Stiles' eyes, staring at him unsmiling, but not frowning either. There was a certain kind of softness in his face that Stiles hadn't seen before. 

"Yeah," Stiles said, looking into Derek's eyes straight-on with no distractions for the first time. They were greener than he'd expected. "Good thing." 

Derek reached out and fussed with the placement of the flowers he'd set on top of the monument. There wasn't anything he could do, but the set of his shoulders looked a little lighter after he stepped away. Stiles picked up his own flowers carefully, brushing away the blades of grass that clung to the tips of the blooms. 

It suddenly occurred to Stiles that while he'd offered to ride along with Derek and had accompanied him to his family's plot, he hadn't actually asked if Derek would come along to his mom's grave. He wondered if it was too late now, if Derek was all cemetery-ed out for one day. He didn't relish going alone, though. He almost always had Scott or his dad with him, and it didn't feel right to go there without them. 

"Let's go," Derek said, turning and heading down the gentle slope to the main path of the cemetery.

Stiles looked down at the flowers in his hand. "Uh, okay," he said, scrambling to catch up. He could come back later and leave them. It didn't have to be now. 

Derek stopped and waited for him on the path, then asked, "Where's your mom buried?"

Stiles licked his lips to hide his smile, then pointed toward the open area down the right fork's path. He didn't say anything, simply started walking and Derek followed, perfectly in step beside him. They walked for a short while in silence, letting the shadows of the larger memorials shrink behind them.

"Why do you bring flowers?" Derek asked, unprompted.

"Why did you?" Stiles returned. 

Derek's face twitched in a sort of allowing grimace. "It seemed like the thing to do." 

"Well, there's your answer." 

Derek shook his head. "No. You don't just do things because other people are doing them." 

Stiles missed a step, but kept walking. "I don't know, I really miss cargo pants, but I still wear skinny jeans every day." 

Stiles couldn't see Derek rolling his eyes, but he knew it was happening. "Only because you know they make your legs look good." 

This time, Stiles stopped. He turned to face Derek, his weight braced skeptically on his back leg. "You think my legs look good," he said flatly. 

Derek froze, a barely perceptible difference from his normal stillness. "They look like legs," he said to the grass.

"Good legs." He hadn't misheard, so he wasn't going to let it go. 

Derek filled his lungs audibly, his chest puffing out as he looked everywhere but Stiles' eyes. "Average legs. Not bad. Your shoulders look better, but you either haven't noticed or you disagree. You hide them." 

Derek started walking again. Stiles hung back, then shook himself out of his shock and speed-walked back to Derek's side. And wasn't that just indicative of their relationship. Stiles always felt that Derek was just out of his league, in general werewolf knowledge, master planning, and now this odd shift in their relationship where Derek noticed his _shoulders_. In everything except basic humaning--owning clothes, having a proper home, an occupation, or at the very least a hobby that wasn't _stay alive this week_ \--Derek seemed to be one step ahead. 

"Okay," Stiles said, because he felt like he had to acknowledge the previous conversation somehow, even though Derek had currently hung a giant side on his back that said 'Not going there.' 

"You didn't answer my question," Derek asked. 

"Which question?" About this shoulders? Had there been a question in there?

"About the flowers." 

"Oh." He slowed his pace, looking down at his feet as the dirt path started to lighten with the introduction of woodchips--his first indicator that they were getting close to their destination. "It's mostly about the reminder. Having something like that to do every once in a while makes me think about her for longer than a passing 'wish you were here'. I get to think about how much she loved flowers, not about how many arrangements I saw at her funeral."

He stopped in front of his mom's headstone, and instead of standing like he had with Derek at the last site, he sat down underneath a tree about 15 feet away. Close enough that Stiles could read the words on the stone, and the tree could cast dappled shade onto the surface, but far enough that Stiles didn't have to think too hard about what he was standing on top of. 

Derek sat beside him. "Sometimes Isaac reminds me of my brother," he said. "I thought it would hurt, but it's actually kind of nice. It's strange. I was just starting to heal from losing them, then Laura…" 

Stiles' chest clenched for Laura, who he'd never met, and never would. "Yeah."

Derek's hands clenched together between his bent, braced knees. "But I thought it'd set me back more than it did. Now, instead of grieving for them all the same, I'm missing them and her in different ways. How is it that I miss Laura more than I miss them? I loved them all the same. They're all gone, her and them." 

"Grief has an expiry date." 

Derek looked at him. There was depths to his sadness that Stiles felt he had already explored himself.

"You can't spend the rest of your life feeling nothing but sad," he said, his fingers clutching the grass on either side of his legs. "That's not normal. Yes, a part of you will always grieve for them, and miss them a lot. That never goes away. But eventually, no matter what you do, the thought of your mom won't make you cry anymore. You'll start to be happy when you think about her. And you'll feel bad about it, but it won't hurt as badly as it did before. It's a fact of life. The acceptance stage."

Derek breathed next to him for a few cycles, then said, "You sound like her. Laura. You remind me of her sometimes."

Stiles rose an eyebrow in what he hoped was a passable imitation of Derek. "Your sister have nice shoulders too?"

Derek's glare was withering, but short-lived. "No. She was wise like you. She could talk me around a lot of dark corners. She was so smart, and articulate, and she had street sense. You've got all of that." His hands tensed in the grass in a way that made Stiles suspected he'd dug too-sharp nails into it. "It makes it hard for me to remember that you're only 16."

"17," Stiles blurted, his heart speeding up from Derek's implications. "Just had a birthday." 

Derek tipped his head in acknowledgement. "Still young."

"Not that young."

"You thinking that is why you're too young." 

Stiles brought his knees under him in a burst of movement, kneeling up next to Derek so that he could feel as if he was on somewhat even ground. 

"What are we talking about right now, Derek?" Stiles demanded. "You keep saying these things and I start thinking that they mean what I want them to mean, but I've been led on by too many popular kids having a joke at my expense to believe anything that's too good to be true."

Derek shook his head, a small, fervent movement. "I'm not joking. I wouldn't do that to you." 

"Why not?" Stiles said, his hands twisting and clenching in front of his knees. "Are we friends? You've never said we were. I know this isn't grade school, and you're not handing out birthday party invitations to everyone and taking mine back five minutes later, but I can't trust this until you tell me exactly what you mean." 

Derek was quiet for almost longer than Stiles could handle. Stiles clamped his mouth shut and told himself that he couldn't put words in Derek's mouth. If he wanted to know what was happening, he needed to be patient and quiet. He needed to listen, not just hear and respond. 

Knowing that didn't make it any easier to see Derek struggle to form a coherent sentence. 

"I like you, Stiles," he said, then he had to take another deep, centering breath that sounded like it belonged in a yoga class. "In a romantic way. You helped me. No one's helped me like that in a long time."

Stiles allowed himself a moment to contemplate Derek's ass in yoga pants, then dug his heels in. 

"So, is this fixation. I'm not Florence Nightingale, there isn't even a syndrome that goes along with crushing on annoying acquaintances who decide to be helpful for once in their life." 

"I'm not fixated," Derek snapped. "You're the same person you've always been since you showed up with Scott outside my house. It's just that…" He brushed an ant off his jeans with more force than necessary. "I can't trust my own judgement. I've already made enough mistakes in that department." 

Stiles winced. It was hard not to be sympathetic when he'd put the pieces of that sordid puzzle together. Kate had been one sick puppy, and his suspicions about how she'd known enough about the Hales to murder them all in one go were an awful thing to be confirmed, however vaguely. 

Stiles swallowed. "I don't think that's really fair. You were pretty--"

"Young?" 

Derek pinned him with an absolutely vicious look of pointed derision. Stiles groaned a flopped onto this back on the grass. 

"Damn," he breathed. “That was very well played. I am hoist by my own petard." 

"What does that even mean?"

"Shakespeare said it, I don't even know."

Stiles felt a rustle of the grass beside his hip, and a dull thud through the earth that told him Derek had moved closer without having to look. 

"I wasn't trying to hoist you," Derek said. "I just wanted to let you know that I was serious, but I'm not going to do anything about it." 

The sky was bright, if not particularly golden and sunny, or blue and cloudless. Stiles squinted up at it through the trees and did a quick reality check. Yes, he still knew who he was. He knew who Derek was. This Derek was the same guy, who, a few weeks ago, he wouldn't have said he knew that well. He probably still didn't know him that well, but they weren't strangers. They were friends, with the burgeoning possibility of more. 

How had that happened, he wondered. When had he started to like Derek as more than just the guy who'd saved his life a couple of times? Had it been when Derek had explained his bluntness as a quirk of his culture? Or when he'd been trying so hard to be a productive member of society with the suspicion of good people hanging over him? Maybe it was when Derek had put his flowers carefully on the physical marker of his family's legacy, then laughed with Stiles to make the pain and tension the graveyard represented seem not quite so hard to bear. 

He was okay with not letting this go anywhere. The knowledge surprised him, but he supposed that was part of getting older and wiser. He'd struggled with the concept of delayed gratification as a kid, wanting everything now, and never later, because what good was it to him later when he didn't have anything now? 

This now, this moment, he still had Derek. He had a different side of him he hadn't seen, and he had a hundred more sides to discover that would probably take years to work through. 

"So, what do we do in the meantime?" Stiles asked.

"Well, I wondered…" 

"Yeah?" 

"If you would help me one more time." 

Stiles pushed himself up again, leaning on his arms with locked elbows. "With what?" 

"I feel disconnected," Derek said, his blunt finger twisting in a piece of overlong grass. "Laura and I were one unit against the world for so long, I guess we forgot how to live in it. She's gone now, and the pack is as stable as it's gonna get for a bunch of teenagers and an alpha who was never meant to be alpha." 

"You're an alright alpha," Stiles interrupted. 

"Yeah, but I'm not as good as Laura would have been. Or my mother was. Or her mom, my grandmother who I never met, but who I heard stories about. She would have known what to do all this time. I'm barely functioning, even though things are basically normal now." 

Stiles considered Derek, his clean, but clearly worn out shirt, his stubble that must be a pain to deal with without a good, hot shower and a steam-resistant mirror. Derek was already a little bit more civilized than he'd been after he'd buried Laura and retreated into the confines of his burned house. It wouldn't take too much guiding to get him back to being human again. 

Stiles didn't want to change him. Derek wasn't a fixer-upper who needed to value the finer things like Stiles did. He just needed to move at the same speed as the people around him. And live in an actual house, not a condemned structure of dubious cleanliness. 

"Okay," Stiles said. "You got it. And while I'm at it, maybe you could help me."

"With what?" 

"Teaching me how to throw an effective punch. Last time I tried it, I felt like a broke my fingers."

"You might have." Derek narrowed his eyes at him. "Who the hell were you punching?" 

Stiles grinned, unashamed. "Jackson. Pre-werewolf. He was being a dick." 

"Unsurprising." 

"You know it." 

"Alright, then," Derek said, then he pushed up from the ground and offered Stiles a hand to pull him up. "I'll give you defence lessons. They'll probably come in handy someday."

"Whoa," Stiles said, half in surprise, half in reaction to his arm being dearly pulled from his socket. "I just need to be able to punch someone--"

Derek shook his head. "That won't be as effective for you as learning to dodge. I'll teach you, don't worry." 

"Oh, I'm worried." 

"Good. You should be." Derek grinned showing off teeth that were pointed, but not in a werewolf way. Just a Derek way. "I'll go easier on you that on the betas, but it won't be simple." 

Stiles groaned. "See, this is what I get for being helpful." 

Derek waited as Stiles tucked the flower arrangement into place on his mom's grave, then they walked to the jeep together. Tomorrow, they'd start to help each other. For now, Stiles thought, they'd just ride back into town and forget about the conversation they'd had, and the simmering sexual tension Stiles was stoked to have confirmed wasn't his imagination. 

They'd get there. Eventually.

*******


End file.
